


Citadel: Drive the Crew Crazy

by chase_acow



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: F/M, Fandom Stocking 2013, Gen, Mass Effect 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-01
Updated: 2014-01-01
Packaged: 2018-01-07 01:27:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1113891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chase_acow/pseuds/chase_acow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Shepard checks her journal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Citadel: Drive the Crew Crazy

**Author's Note:**

  * For [frith_in_thorns](https://archiveofourown.org/users/frith_in_thorns/gifts).



> Happy Fandom Stocking, frith_in_thorns. I have such mixed feelings about Garrus, but writing this helped me think about his perspective a little more. : ) I hope you enjoy this silly little thing.

"Look over there. That's where I got my first arrest. A Salarian pick-pocket working the crowd while a human did something called 'performance art'," Garrus made air quotes, he loved air quotes. That arrest was a happy memory before his career with C-Sec soured. His father had taken him out to dinner to mark the event, one of their last outings before he'd started collecting strongly worded letters in his personnel file. "It sounded like noise to me, and it took the keepers forever to scrub the fruit pulp off the walls. Shepard, you ever . . . Shepard?"

He turned a circle looking for her in the presidium. Legion was watching an advertisement for VI pets, and he spotted Grunt haggling with the shotgun specialist in the weapons section. Garrus retraced his steps wondering if she'd found another conversation she had to eavesdrop on, or maybe even another giant red button that summoned a Reaper consciousness. There was no telling anymore.

Instead, she was standing smack in the middle of the aisle, oblivious to the dirty looks the other patrons shot her way as they detoured around her. Her military fatigues made contrasted from the skimpy and lazy dress of the Citadel residents. They should be preparing for a Reaper invasion, not queuing up for the latest Blasto interactive vid.

Damn the Council, anyway. 

"Shepard, what are you doing?" Garrus asked, twisting his head to the side as he tried to see what was so interesting.

"Looking at my journal," Shepard muttered, poking her tongue out the side of her mouth as she scrolled through more entries on her omni-tool. "I think I'm forgetting something."

Garrus managed to avoid a Krogan elbow to his shield emitters, and began subtly nudging Shepard out from the walk-way. It wasn't habit again yet, to wait while she scanned everything or when she spoke to anyone loitering in random places with nothing better to do. He shouldn't have kept walking when she stopped, on a mission, anything could have happened. He needed to be better.

At one point, it was second nature. Shepard moved and he was her shadow, just a fraction slower, always just behind, and noticed just as much. When she died, it was like he didn't know what to do anymore, and there wasn't anyone left to follow or take orders from. He drifted, wishing he'd been with her when she floated away from the Normandy. She always hated being alone.

Archangel needed to be alone. Sure, he'd found a crew eventually, but only after he'd learned how to give orders, and how to shoulder the responsibility he'd taken for granted before. Archangel and Garrus were about as different as two Turians could be, and figuring out who he'd become since was more difficult than he would have thought possible.

In the end, he'd be Shepard's, whatever she needed him to be even if it wasn't as much as he wanted to be. He'd seen the way she'd looked at Kaiden and Liara on the original Normandy. He would trade in his five favorite scopes if she'd look at him that way.

"Ha! I knew it!" Shepard's fingers danced over the tech as she highlighted something. "I should have taken those holographic cufflinks we found on that moon three missions ago to that Salarian merchant on Illium. He's trying to get an invitation to that Elcor production of _A Christmas Carol_."

"We were just on Illium," Garrus reminded her, his mandibles flaring. They'd already spent more on fuel than during the entire search for Saren. 

"Yeah, but while we're there, we can pick up that panorama of wild fowl in flight for an antiquer I just met," Shepard said, quickly keying in the recall code before shutting down her omni-tool. 

Even from across the market, Garrus heard Grunt start cursing loudly with every colloquialism he'd picked up so far. He must have been on the edge of getting a good deal before Shepard ordered them back to the Normandy. 

"Why do you do this?" Garrus asked, falling into step beside her. He actually didn't mind, not like how Miranda got twitchy when they visited the same merchant distributor kiosk or Shepard started repeating herself in conversations. 

"I don't know," Shepard said, twisting through the crowd with a grace he wouldn't have expected from someone with that thick human waist. "It feels like with the whole galaxy going to hell, every little thing helps. Spark a little hope here with something completely innocuous and that fans a fire somewhere else. Sometimes the strangest friends come back around to help at the most needed moment. It's going to take all of us to deal with this threat."

That was the Shepard he knew. He didn't care how many synthetic bits were holding her together, Cerberus hadn't changed anything that made her, _her_. Kaiden was wrong on Horizon, this was his Commander. He'd follow her to hell, and through it to the other side.

"Or maybe I'm just that OCD that I want to finish everything in my journal before we go suicide at the Collector Base," Shepard shrugged and grinned up at him. She nudged him with her elbow, a gesture he'd come to realize was a comrade inviting him to share in a positive feeling. "I'm glad you're here with me."

Garrus ducked his head, he'd never get used to the way she could say things like that. He never wanted to get used to it, not when he could feel free fall in his gut every time she smiled at him. "Not anywhere else I'd rather be," he answered.

"I think we could use some more palladium, too," she added, looping her arm through his.

Other turians watched them, but Garrus couldn't help letting his chest puff out. Human affection was strange, but he could adapt. "Then let's go get some," he said. "Anything you want."

"Anything?" she asked, her voice oddly arched.

"Well, no," Garrus admitted, his stomach swooping again. "I will never again climb in a Mako with you."

Her laughter bounced throughout the presidium.


End file.
